The present apparatus relates to construction equipment and more particularly to an easily transportable machine for breaking up paving material by a single operator.
The use of concrete breakers and the like with a variety of construction equipment, including skid steers and excavating equipment, is well known in the art. However, concrete breakers attached to hydraulically powered vehicles heretofore have typically comprised one of two types; a hydraulically driven vibrating bit, commonly referred to as a jack hammer, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,107, issued to Shook, and a gravity powered drop hammer utilizing a pivoting swing arm mounted on the lift arms of the equipment, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,282, issued to Osborn.
Likewise, transportable, gravity powered drop hammers for breaking concrete and asphalt pavement also are known. Such apparatus are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,659,583, issued to Dorkins, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,661 issued to Ellington. Such portable devices are typically towed to a location and then operated manually by repeated raising and dropping a weight upon the groundwork surface. When the desired amount of concrete breaking has occurred, the drop hammer carrier is moved or otherwise towed to the next work location.
An improved transportable drop hammer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,740, which discloses a ground-stabilized, portable drop hammer assembly that is highly maneuverable, faster, easily adaptable to existing construction equipment and which can be operated in an efficient manner by a single operator. A commercial drop hammer concrete breaker manufactured under U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,740 is a CYCLONE™ concrete breaker (Universal Impact Technologies, Inc., Jasper, Ga.). A similar design concrete hammer is a BOBCAT® drop hammer attachment (Ingersoll Rand, West Fargo, N. Dak.). Both of these commercial drop hammers exhibit the same problem during use. When the drop hammer (or drop weight) is dropped multiple times on the same area of concrete, the created concrete chunks accumulate underneath the drop hammer causing the drop hammer to be displaced into and contact the inside of the aperture plate or base, eventually causing it damage. The present disclosure is addressed to solving such problem.